>>11846337
Silent hill 1 and two were groundbreakers for two reasons
1) Silent Hill one made use of the PS1s greatest asset, a CD capable if high quality soundtracks and what a soundtrack it was.I think the real horror element is the soundtrack and sound effects, the visuals just support that, that continued in Silent hill two also but with better graphics
W)They were mass market games entirely abandoning the children's portion of gaming and targeting young men, that would have been inconceivable even a few years earlier.Sony and the PS1 were instrumental into normalising gaming for adults before that it was essentially a kids only thing aside from flight simulators and a handful of PC games for managers stuck in offices.Wipeout with its hard-core club soundtrack is the other example of Sony and the PS1 changing the perception of games being a kids thing to something that was also enjoyed by men and women in their 20s, wipeout deliberately targeted the after rave party scene.

Why was Silent hill 2 criticised? Well believe it or not so was resident evil four for drifting from being hard core horror to becoming a third person shooter, I did not buy resident evil for at the time as it had a massive reputation for not being 'resident evil' but something else more shooter based. The same for Silent Hill two but now we can appreciate them both as being great. Again the soundtrack makes it for me.

Silent hill three? No opinion, it made no impact at the time and its been in my back catalog for 20 years, Silent hill 1 and 2 had sated the horror market appetite well